


Of Just Deserts

by Blacktablet (Ishamaeli)



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-21
Updated: 2012-01-21
Packaged: 2017-10-29 22:12:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/324715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ishamaeli/pseuds/Blacktablet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The one in which there is a desert, John has been waiting for a while, and Sherlock gets kicked in the ankle by the Death of Rats.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Just Deserts

**Author's Note:**

> Footnotes fixed! They are of the clickable sort to take you there and back without scrolling. I... may have gone slightly footnote-happy. I tried to restrain myself. Crossover with _Discworld_. Beta'd as closely as I can but I take no responsibility for the commas. THEY BREED. LIKE BUNNIES.
> 
>  **Disclaimer:** Sherlock and John in their current incarnation belong to Steven Moffat, Mark Gatiss and BBC. Discworld is the invention of Terry Pratchett.

Sherlock hadn’t expected there to be an afterlife.

He got up and dusted the dark sand off his clothes, carefully checking them for wear and tear. Before the deafening sound of a gun going off in close range, he had been busy subduing the murderer of a renowned chess player who had been found strangled in his hotel room with a chess piece lodged under his swollen tongue. The identity of the culprit had been obvious to Sherlock once he had identified the piece as a white king. It hadn’t taken him much time at all to find out who had lost the last game the murdered man had won while playing Black.

The sleeve of his jacket had been torn beyond repair during the fight, Sherlock noted absently, but the bullet hole on the right breast looked fairly neat. The wound itself had stopped bleeding and didn’t hurt much at all.

As soon as the thought occurred to him, the last echoes of pain faded away like a vague afterthought about something that he couldn’t quite remember anymore.

He wasn’t hurting _anywhere_ , he realised. Not that he was feeling particularly well, either, but the expected bruises and scratches were not clamouring for his attention like they usually did once the adrenaline rush died down.

How peculiar.

The shuffling sound of footsteps caught Sherlock’s attention before he had a chance to examine the phenomenon further. There was a figure moving towards him from not too far away, every other step accompanied by the little ‘thump’ of a cane hitting the black sand that covered the ground as far as he could see.

Sherlock didn’t need the aid of the harsh light that was everywhere to recognise the man. “John,” he said and stated the obvious for the fourth time in his—

his—

Well.

For the fourth time, in any case.

“Hullo, Sherlock,” John replied. “He said that there was no hurry unless I wanted to go, so I thought I’d wait for you. Knew you’d get here sooner or later.” Then he grimaced a little and muttered, “Sooner, I see.”

“Who said?” Sherlock asked.1 He was staring at John, cataloguing all the changes that strangely enough _hadn’t_ happened since the last time they laid eyes on each other, and prepared to store the reply away for later examination.

The Death of Rats kicked him in the ankle rather sharply.

SQUEAK.

Sherlock looked down. “Oh,” he said after a moment.2 “I see.”

John gave an amused huff and adjusted his grip on the cane. “So, you speak rat now? How long _have_ I been gone?”

“I simply ‘did the math’ as they say,” Sherlock huffed. “The skeleton of a medium-sized _Rattus rattus_ is wearing a black robe and _hitting me_ ,” he stepped away with an irritated frown, “in the calf with a miniature scythe. There isn’t much math to do, is there?”

John, who had been dead for six years and four months as far as Sherlock recalled, merely shook his head in reply.3

SQUEAK, the Death of Rats said and gave them a humourless grin.

“We should get going,” John suggested. “Now that we’re both here, there’s no sense in dwelling.”

Sherlock looked around. There didn’t appear to be much anywhere to go to.

“Is this... everything?” he asked hesitantly. “The last time I bothered to pay attention, the general consensus seemed to be that there’d be some kind of gates. Or possibly fire if you were unfortunate.”

SQUEAK.

“There is, sometimes,” John translated. “It depends on a lot of things, really.6” The skeletal rat let out a series of squeaks. “Though he says that _here_ there is always the desert, and judgment at the end of it.”

Sherlock opened his mouth to ask the logical question, and yelped with pain instead when the tiny scythe hit him where there wasn’t much anything between the bones of his ankle and his skin. “You damned—!”

“He does that when he thinks people are being slow,” John remarked calmly. “Sometimes I wonder if you’d have got through to people better with a scythe.”

SQUEAK. The Death of Rats gave the impression of rolling its eyes - perfected with practice7 \- and disappeared in a flash of blue light.

“He’s got more flair for drama than the other fellow.”

Sherlock paused in rubbing his ankle. “You don’t mean...?” Then it suddenly registered what he was doing, and he straightened himself with a mildly puzzled expression. “I wasn’t hurting before.” He glanced down at the hole in his chest. “Why did that hurt?”

John reached out to smooth the lapel of his jacket so that it partially covered the hole. “You are long past this one hurting, I’m afraid,” he murmured. “Your ankle, on the other hand... I think the rat is part of wherever, or whatever, the ‘long past’ is. It’s not really pain.”

“It certainly felt like pain.” Sherlock took a deep breath, thought about their situation very carefully, and then gestured decisively with his hand. “We’ll head in that direction until we find something.” He paused to look at John. “Whatever it is. Does that sound acceptable?”

“I think it sounds fantastic, to tell you the truth.”

They set off into the desert.

 

1 More because of a Pavlovian reaction to new information than any real curiosity.  
2 During which his brain readjusted its gears and spat out a message written in big font, with several points underlined in red pen. Most of them had to do with ‘bullet hole?’ and ‘JOHN!!’  
3 Much to his regret, Sherlock couldn’t be perfectly sure how much time had passed since John’s death. He had spent the first half a year4 up to his eyeballs in cocaine, until eventually Mycroft had been forced to put his foot down. 5  
4 He estimated.  
5 Again.  
6 Mainly quantum.  
7 And some advice from Quoth the raven, who was a championship eye-roller. 8  
8 Of both his own and other people’s.


End file.
